David Lowenthal, quoted in Beth Wenger's absorbing study of the construction of Jewish American history, notes, “Heritage everywhere not only tolerates but thrives on historical error. Falsified legacies are integral to group identity and uniqueness” (205). Myth has long been an essential component of Jewish history in America, from reiterating the early immigrant Jews' perception that America would allow them to pursue freer lives than they had ever experienced in Europe to nurturing a sense of Jewish belonging in America through what Wenger terms a “rhetoric of compatibility” (3). This sense of compatibility has, she maintains, been crucial in establishing Jews' commitment to the new country. American Jews have, for example, frequently highlighted how the Puritan Founding Fathers drew upon the same Old Testament teachings that were also sacred to Jews. This ideology persists to the present day; as Wenger remarks in her introduction, the book was inspired by her Jewish students' beliefs that American democratic ideals are self-evidently located in and correspond with Jewish traditions.

History Lessons traces the various ways in which Jewish American individuals and institutions have carefully manufactured and safeguarded a mythological version of their own history. The study strikes precisely the right tone throughout. While Wenger foregrounds numerous shortcomings in the questionable “heritage” version of Jewish American history, which she describes as “self-serving but … not malicious” (205), she nevertheless delineates the quite understandable reasons for those narratives' emergence. Chapters in the book focus on Jewish involvement in and adaptation of American national holidays; vigorous avowals of patriotism, as evidenced by Jewish participation in American wars; and a delineation of the way in which textbooks aimed at Jewish American children have sought to achieve a delicate balance, affirming Jews' loyalty to the American nation and its concomitant freedoms, while simultaneously proffering a distinct and recognizable culture. Most compellingly, the final chapter, “Sculpting an American Jewish Hero,” takes as its topic the emblematic case of Haym Salomon. Salomon was a Polish Jewish immigrant, a merchant and broker who during the time of the Revolutionary War used his international connections to negotiate loans for the nascent American government. Not much more than that is actually known about his life, but this has not stopped centuries of apocrypha attaching themselves to Salomon, whereby he has become a celebrated figure, the first Jewish American hero, and so-called Financier of the Revolution. In analysing the development of the myth of Salomon, not least the numerous attempts by various nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish communities to erect statues in his honour – despite the lack of a single contemporary portrait of the man – Wenger provides an absorbing case study that adroitly illustrates the themes of myth and Jewish American defensiveness that run throughout her book.

Occasionally Wenger's thoroughness results in slight repetitiveness; for example, the separate analyses of the importance to the American Jewish community of Thanksgiving and Independence Day bear certain similarities. This is a minor criticism, however, and this is an important and exceptionally well-researched book, shedding new light on numerous neglected exceptions to the well-worn clichés and mythologized versions of Jewish American history. Wenger's assessment is astute, in terms of specific details of Jewish American mythologizing and more broadly contextualizing this alongside the analogous practices of other immigrant, and equally self-defensive, minorities. Here the book is impressively subtle in analysis, for example in the observation that Jews were unique amongst immigrant groups coming to America in their having experienced life as a minority before immigration. History Lessons provides fascinating and essential reading for anyone keen to learn more about the more neglected dimensions of the cultural history of American Jews.